"Black spots" and now 420 Colour won't download images

[astronomerjohn]

I'm running a 420 Color camera with a Celestron C8 and Hyper-Star lens from Starizona. It's been working extremely well for more than a dozen sessions...until three nights ago.

Three nights ago I started noticing black "speckles" in some of my images -- they looked like circular clouds, but there were no clouds in the sky at that location. Later that night some of my images recorded large dark areas (like dark nebulas, except there are no dark nebulas at that location).

Last night, the camera stopped delivering images to the computer altogether. I am using Maxim DL5.

I tried re-booting both the camera and Maxim DL, to no effect. No images were being downloaded. (In Maxim DL, the focusser box that shows a V-Curve, was blank. The "show statistics" box had weird readings (like Max: 100 and FWHM:0).

All cords are tight and the camera is getting good 12-volt power. I hope what I'm seeing isn't some kind of CCD chip burnout!

Any experience with this, folks?

John Barr

[astronomerjohn]

On the hope that the apparent malfunction might be current fluctuation to the camera (I was powering it with a 12 volt cell that may have been low on charge) I switched to another 12 volt cell and the problem disappeared. I'm thinking the 420 Colour may be highly sensitive to small voltage fluctuations and I'm going to be sure to keep all my 12 volt cells charged up.

JJB